Notes and Editorial Reviews

"In 1834 Schumann founded the music journal Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. In 1838 he began to issue with it a music supplement. Such supplements were far from uncommon at the time but were usually vehicles for undemanding scores for the amateur musician. Schumann intended something different and for four years (1838-41) these supplements became a force in the artistic land. The three CD set opens a casement onto that cornucopiac world. The music is by a range of contemporary composers favoured by Schumann but also included ten of his own works and two by Clara. The 76 works featured are short (between two and three minutes – a mix of songs sometimes for more than one voice and solo piano pieces and various organ pieces. The longestRead more at 6:20 is Clara Wieck-Schumann’s Andante and Allegro which starts CD 2 with its swirl of romantic effusion. Texts are given as sung and in translation. The piano solos are largely taken by Klaus Sticken. For the lieder the pianist is the erudite and expert Cord Garben. Various singers have been engaged but the one who for me stands out for his golden tone is Jan Kobow singing either alone or as part of a small vocal ensemble. None of these pieces strikes me as a miss but let me commend a handful. Pauline Viardot-Garcia is another woman composer featured and Johanna Stojkovic sweetly encompasses the birdsong melisma and the florid operatic moments of Die Kapelle. Sticken lends stormy wings to Schumann’s Intermezzo. I had never heard previously of Johann Vesque von Püittlingen but his lied Die Geisterinsel pulls off a nice equipoise between love song and melancholy. The Beethoven Gesang der Mönche is a male vocal quartet piece here sung with a strong orange sepia tone. Henselt’s Der Dombau is for vocal quintet with two sopranos adding a yieldingly piercing cuckoo descant above the steady melodic refrain. Irresistible as to a degree is similarly modelled Schumann Rastlose Liebe for male trio. At the start of CD 3 we return to Clara and to her nicely rounded lied Am Strand from Stojkovic and Garben. One of Schumann’s most touchingly haloed pieces is his lied Mondnacht here sung again by Stojkovic. Back to a mixed vocal quintet and piano for Gesang der Sterne by Oswald Lorenz. This is an mystical and muscular piece redolent of the most volatile and exalted writing for the singers in Beethoven’s Choral Symphony. Rietz’s setting of Goethe’s Die Hexenküche has an awed yet youthfully enthused spoken introduction over the piano until the arrival of Jale Papila with her operatic smoulder. Schubert’s Aria (Des jammer herbe qualen) from Fierabras is for five voices and piano; it strikes me as one of the most ordinary of the 76 tracks. The trio of discs ends with Paganini’s unusually introspective and undemonstrative Stambuchblatt.

This set will perhaps be regarded as the province of Schumann specialists but in truth any music-lovers with a taste for the German lied and romantic era piano music will be pleasurably surprised to make so many discoveries and to add so many new names to their ‘to be explored’ list."